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Public Welfare and Public Utility Service 


Bulletin No. 2 
oy 
“ELECTRICITY 
3 oO mi 


Its Process of Manufacture and Distribution 
Pictured in Simple Language 


ee Use of High School Students, 
. Classes, and Current Topies Clubs 


ea Mah va ht Issued by 
ILLINOIS COMMITTEE on PUBLIC UTILITY INFORMATION 
203 South Dearborn Street FE ~ - Chicago, Illinois 


ELECTRICITY 


Introductory : 


Public utilities have grown out of public neces- 
sities. As shown in Bulletin No. 1 issued by the 
Illinois Committee on Public Utility Informa- 
tion under the title “A Half-Century Miracle,” the 
role played by the great utilities, such as electric- 
ity supply, gas supply, water supply, telephone 
service, street-railway service, etc., is of tremend- 
ous importance in the daily home life and indus- 
trial life of the people. 

The present bulletin shows in a general way 
how one of these great utilities works, what is 
the original source of the energy it employs, and 
how that energy is utilized. 


Electricity a Mysterious, 
but Useful Power: 


When the mother of a household~ puts the 
week’s washing into an electric washing machine, 
taking it out a little later white and spotless, 
she rarely gives any thought to the invisible 
energy that does the washing for her; or wonders 
at the marvel of the little vacuum cleaner that 
banishes dust from her home. And perhaps it 
is no wonder that she does not, for no one—not 
even the most learned scientist—will say that he 
knows what electricity really is. Although one 
of the unsolved mysteries of the world, it is yet 
susceptible to the nicest control. Take it away 
from the modern world and we would be set 
back in progress hundreds of years. 


A Myriad of Uses: 


A myriad of devices of all sorts for producing 
or utilizing electric heat, light and power have 
been invented. Electricity rings the front door 
bell, tows a ship through the Panama Canal, 
lifts a great bridge, pulls a train over the Great 
American Divide, increases the efficiency of a 
modern factory by providing vastly increased and 
better directed illumination and by supplying a 
more efficient and easily controlled motive power, 
milks the cows for the farmer, chops his feed, 
and does a multitude of other things. 


The Great Minds of Electricity: 


Many minds have contributed to the develop- 
ment of the present-day electric central-station 
system. If only one name were to be mentioned 
in connection with this development, it would 
undoubtedly be that of Thomas A. Edison. But 
before Edison and contemporary with him a host 


of other electrical scientists and inventors have 
contributed their part. Such men as Dr. William 
Gilbert, Benjamin Franklin, Luigi Galvani, Ales-_ 
sandro Volta, Sir Humphry Davy, H. C. Oersted, 
A. M. Ampere, G. S. Ohm, Charles Wheatstone, 
Michael Faraday, Joseph Henry, Z. T: Gramme, 
J. C. Maxwell, A. Pacinotti, S. Z. de Ferranti, 
Werner von Siemens, Lord Kelvin and many 
others have done very important work. 


Watching the Service Demand: 


Let us go to the electric lighting company and 
see just how electricity is made to do its work. 
We walk into the office of the manager of one 
of these companies. One of the manager’s duties 
is to watch the traffic. He is the guardian over 
the flow of electricity. Every minute of the day 
he can tell something interesting about what the 
citizens of his community are doing. Before him 
he has a long sheet on which lines indicate the 
rise and fall in the use of the service he is fur- 
nishing. His fingers are on the “pulse” every 
minute. The line which he is watching is called 
the “load,” which simply means the total amount 
of service being used at a given moment. 

We will watch him for a day. Let us say this 
particular manager is manager of a local electric 
company. In the larger companies there is a man 
assigned to this work solely, and he is called the 
“load dispatcher.” 

It is 5 o’clock in the morning. The line is 
running along straight. It is 5:30 A. M.; the 
line commences nervously to start upwards. Some 
people are rising and turning on the lights. It 
is 6 A. M.; the line has shot far up. Many people 
are getting up, but it is still dusk, and they must 
have light. It is 7 A. M.; the line has taken an 
almost perpendicular upturn. Practically every- 
body in town is now up; some are using elec- 
tricity to read the morning paper, some for cook- 
ing; the street car systems have put on many cars 
hauling people to work; the industries have 
turned on electricity for operating the big ma- 
chines. It is 8 o’clock; his line shows that out 
in the residence districts but little current is 
being used, but in the manufacturing centers, the 
load is tremendous. So he watches the current 
that would have gone to the residential district 
shift to the manufacturing district. The street 
car load is much less than it was while people 
were going to work. 

It is mid-day. The residential district load has 
“picked up” a little. Some women are ironing, 
others using sewing machines, washing ma- 


Ld tales ger 27 '38 


chines, or vacuum cleaners, still others are cook- 
ing lunch. 

Afternoon sees his line up near the top of 
his sheet and keeping steady. Most of the cur- 
rent is being used in the manufacturing plants. 

Five o’clock comes. The workers quit for the 
day. The mills, with the exception of the great 


electric furnaces in the steel mills and smelters, 


we 


close down their machinery. But at the same 
time has come a great demand from another 
source. The people must get home. The trans- 
portation electric load swells. The residential 
districts are again demanding electricity for 
lighting and cooking. His load shifts over to 
that side. Up until 6 P. M. it may sag a trifle, 
while the industrial load has eased, but then the 
great demand comes for the evening lighting of 
the homes, and it picks up again. 

Then comes 9 o’clock. The children have been 
put to bed. Many lights have been darkened. 
The load sags; 10 o’clock and many grown-ups 
are going to bed and it sags more; 11 o’clock and 
the majority are in bed and the demand now is 
far below that of an hour before. The great 
engines in the power plant can be eased up a bit, 
given a little rest, when repairs and cleaning can 
be done for a repetition of this giving of service 
in the morning. 

What the electric manager saw, the gas and 
telephone and transportation traffic men saw, 
their line only changing to represent the happen- 
ings in their particular branch of giving service. 
They are the genii who “drive” invisible forces 
about their work, seeing that at all times they 
work efficiently and are always on the spot when 
needed and that their strength is equal to the 
tasks they must perform. 


The U. S! First: 


In the practical applications of electricity the 
United States has been, perhaps, first among the 
nations. 

The first commercial electricity supply com- 
pany in this country, and the first in the world 
to be a part of a system continuously operated 
from that time to this, was the Pearl Street 
station of the New York Edison Company, put 
into operation on September 4, 1882, according 
to plans conceived and executed by Edison. A 
month or so later a small waterpower Edison 


central station was put into service at Appleton, 
Wis. 


The Central Station Developed 
Rapidly: 


Great changes have occurred in central-station 
development since the early days. The first 
electrical generating machines were rated from 
6 to 10 kilowatts each, while today units rated 
at 50,000 kilowatts, or even more, are in service. 
The Chicago Central-Station Company is no 
doubt the largest individual electricity-supply 
organization in the world, its output of electricity 


in 1919 being no less than 1,630,000,000 kilowatt- 
hours. The generating capacity of this company 
was about 640 kilowatts in 1888 and is about 580,- 
000 kilowatts today. (See definition of Kilowatt 
and Kilowatt-Hour hereafter.) 


W here Electricity Comes From: 


The public obtains this electrical energy, 
which we have been picturing, from central 
generating plants or “Central Stations” as they 
are called, where electricity can be produced in 
large quantities and sent out from advantageously 
located centers to supply the needs of the people 
—to make their lamps burn, to operate their 
factory machines, to make street cars and inter- 
urban cars go, to supply the electric flat irons 
and the electric fans, and for all the thousands 
of uses for which electricity is employed. 

Electricity can be produced most economically 
by the use of large generating units, and it can 
also be transmitted and distributed to the great- 
est advantage if all the electrical needs of a large 
community or a number of small communities 
are supplied from one common system of wires. 
Therefore, the modern tendency is for the small 
individual community central station of earlier 
years to disappear, being replaced by the sub- 
stations (or local distributing stations) of large 
systems, giving the smaller towns the benefits 
and economies of the great system. 

There are two kinds of electricity made and 
distributed by a central station—‘direct” and 
“alternating.” Direct, or continuous current, 
constantly flows in one direction. This kind of 
current, because it cannot be sent any great dis- 
tance, is used largely in the congested centers of 
populous cities. Alternating current flows first 
in one direction, then reverses, but so fast that 
the changes cannot be detected in an electric 
light by the naked eye. Alternating current can 
be sent, economically, hundreds of miles, and 
therefore, is now used almost universally. 


How Electricity is Made Available: 


Electricity is produced from some form of heat 
energy, aS that obtained by the combustion of 
coal, oil, gas or wood; from some form of 
mechanical energy like that of falling water 
or (to a slight extent) wind power, or from 
chemical energy, as in batteries. In the case of 
waterpower plants the momentum of the falling 
water is used to turn waterwheels which in turn 
operate electric generators. The water may be 
comparatively small in amount, but of great 
velocity or it may be of low pressure and of 
much volume, or of any combination of these 
characteristics. 

In the case of the familiar central station pro- 
ducing electrical energy from steam derived from 
the burning of coal we first see long trains of 
sometimes more than a hundred coal cars deliver- 
ing the fuel from the mines of Central Illinois to 
the premises of the central station. (But elec- 
tric generating plants are sometimes built right 


‘ 


at the coal mine in Illinois and other states.) 
Here the coal is handled by various forms of 
mechanical conveyers and crushers, themselves 
run by electricity, and delivered to the automatic 
stokers of the furnaces without being touched 
by human hands. (See “A,” in illustration.) 
The other raw material (assuming that brains, 
labor and capital are not raw materials) is water, 
and it is delivered to the boilers, the steam pro- 
duced by the application of the heat of the burn- 
ing coal being led through pipes to steam tur- 
bines, where its expansive force and impact are 
used to turn the shafts of electric generators (B). 


The Turbine: hebtis an Ait 

The principle of the steam turbine is.very 
simple. . It is practically the same as the water 
turbine, and the water turbine is nothing but 
an elaborated water wheel. The latter receives 
its power from water pressure of rivers or reser- 
voirs of water stored so that when the water 
flows it strikes the blades of the wheel, rotating it 
and producing power. In like. manner steain 
generated ina central station by boilers is forced 
against the blades of a steam. turbine, which 
rotates from this impact, perhaps.1,800 times a 
minute, and produces power. ‘To these turbines 
“electric machines” or generators, as we now 
call them, are usually attached direct to the 
shaft without the use of belts. 

The energy we have pictured as being created 
in a central generating station so far is mechani- 
cal energy and not electrical, but right here, be- 
tween the turbine and the generator, the trans- 
formation takes place. ,The power that goes into 
the turbine as mechanical energy is taken from 
the generator at the other end of the shaft as 
electrical energy. 

In spite of the enormous power locked up in 
a modern generator, the principle of its work is 
founded on very simple laws. Early experi- 
ments by the famous Faraday (born in England, 
1791) marked the beginning of the electric 
generator, and the same laws that Faraday 
worked out are applied to the making of the huge 
generators of today, nothing of importance hav- 
ing been added except elaboration of.machinery. 
Faraday first took a coil of wire and a magnet. 
Each time the magnet was thrust into the coil 
its magnetism was found to cause a flow of 
electricity in the coil, as shown by a compass 
near the coil of wire. The same phenomenon 
takes place when a generator rotates. A large 
magnet and several coils of wire connected in a 
circuit do the same work, only thousands of 
times more effectively. So long as the generator 
and turbine rotate a flow of electricity will be 
generated. In fact, nowadays the turbine and 
the generator are so closely related that they are 
made by manufacturers in one machine known 
as a turbo-generator. 

The electricity which comes from the gene- 
rators is so powerful that it must be very care- 
fully controlled. This is accomplished by means 
of various copper switching devices (C). Copper 


is used because it is one of the best conductors 
of electricity, and relatively cheap. The energy 
is often raised to a high pressure because at high 
pressures electricity can be transmitted over long 
distances. by.use of comparatively small copper 
wires. Electrical energy from the power house 
is thus often sent great distances over “trans- 
mission lines’ of poles and wires—the great 
arteries of the. electrical system—to the place 
where it is required. 


The Transformer: 


Now, before the electricity which these trans- 
mission lines carry may be put to practical use 
as ight or power, the pressure must be greatly 
reduced. A device known as a transformer is 
used to.accomplish this. Transformers may be 
used in two ways—they can either “step” the 
pressure up, or reduce the pressure. Sometimes 
huge’ transformers, (D), are used in “sub-sta- 
tions,’ from which energy is distributed to large 
sections of a city or to small towns, but the trans- 
formers which are a familiar sight on poles in 
streets or alleys, (E), finally reduce the pressure 
to a safe point for domestic use and send it into 
the dozen or more houses in the midst of which 
the transformer is located. 


The Basic Laws of Electrical Energy: 


Something very interesting takes place within 
the transformer and if our eyes could see elec- 
tricity we should see a remarkable phenomenon 
going on all the time in each one of these little 
iron boxes. We have already noted above, in 
connection with the generator, that when a piece 
of magnetized iron was moved through a coil of 
wire electricity was produced. Early experi- 
menters found another truth which naturally 
followed; viz., that. when electricity flowed 
through a coil of wire around a piece of iron 
magnetism was produced in the iron. These 
two principles taken together illustrate how a 
transformer works. Suppose we think of elec- 
trical energy as it travels from the power sta- 
tion along transmission lines into the transformer 
box. There it runs into a coil of wire which 
surrounds a piece of iron. The electricity in the 
coil magnetizes the iron and the magnetized iron 
in its turn produces electricity in another coil, 
which is around the magnet but entirely sepa- 
rate from the first coil. The more wires in either 
of these two coils.the more pressure we have, 
therefore, if one coil has ten times as many wires 
as the other or “secondary” coil, the pressure at 
the other side of the transformer will be reduced 
to. one-tenth of what it was when it entered it. 

From the other side of the transformer elec- 
tricity is led at low pressure into the house or 
factory through a service switch where it can 
be turned on or off, and then through a meter, 
which measures the current. After that it is 
available for toasters, irons and the dozens of 
other household uses. In the case of the large 


neighborhood sub-stations, power taken from the 
secondary side of the large transformers may be 
used to operate street railways or street lighting 
circuits. 


What an Electrical Map of the 
U.S. A. Would Look Like: 


If one could see, upon a map of the United 
States, outlines of systems for generating, trans- 
mitting and distributing electricity the impres- 
sion would be something like a number of inter- 
connected spider-webs, each large generating 
station being the center of its own web. Each 
system may have several generating stations, the 
whole network being tied together in such a way 
that the breakdown of a machine in one generat- 
ing station or the failure of a sub-station would 
not, usually, mean loss of service to the customer, 
other sources of supply being available in emer- 


gency. 


The Great Electrical Distribution 
Systems are Being Linked Together: 


Alteady many farms have electricity delivered 
to them by the central station plants and within 
a very short time it is to be expected that the 
rural districts will have the same efficient and 
modern service as is possible in the thickly popu- 
lated cities. The same plants that serve the 
cities, now furnish service. to the smaller com- 
munities and to the farms. They are no longer 
local distributors, but reach out as far as their 
wires reach. One company, alone, may serve 
hundreds of communities from its central sta- 
tion energy producing plants. That is why the 
rendering of service is now regulated by the 
state. It has outgrown its original boundaries. 


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GRAPHICAL DIAGRAM 


SHOWING THE PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS OF THE PHYSICAL SYSTEM REQUIRED TO CONVERT OUR RAW 
2 MATERIAL (COAL) INTO ELECTRICAL] ENERGY AND TO BRING IT TO THE CONSUMERS IN USABLE FORM. 


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With the great transmission wires now travers- 
ing several states and with probabilities of event- 
ually linking up all of the states, it is possible 
that shortly regulation must be by the federal 
government, as well as by states. Such are the 
necessities of progress in an industry so vital to 
the nation’s health and prosperity. 


Electricity a Large Factor in the 
Future of the Country: 


Electricity is now transmitted for 200 miles or 
more, and as time goes on may be transmitted 
for much longer distances. But still more aston- 
ishing is the fact that some of the great trans- 
mission systems are so inter-connected that 
electricity may travel in these systems seven or 
eight hundred or, perhaps, a thousand miles. It 
iS a prime necessity of modern life and it is being 
spread over the land, so to speak, so rapidly that 
it will soon be available everywhere. Its growth 
is dependent upon a wise policy of encourage- 
ment on the part of the public. 


Electricity Cannot Be Stored: 


One characteristic of electrical power which 
has an interesting bearing on central station 
enterprises is that it cannot be stored. This is 
not literally true, because you are all familiar 
with dry batteries and the larger storage bat- 
teries, but for general power purposes in large 
cities batteries are not practical except as an 
emergency reserve. The result is that when a 


customer of a central station company makes a 
“demand” upon the company for electricity by 
turning a switch, the company must be prepared 
to supply this demand instantaneously and it must 


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DISTRIBUTION 










likewise be prepared to supply all of the simul- 
taneous demands of all of its customers. Unfor- 
tunately central stations cannot make up in ad- 
vanceenough electricity to supply their customers 
for a day or a week or a month as a store stocks 
up its goods in advance of its customers’ demands 
or as the gas companies store gas in their huge 
holders. This very fact puts an added burden 
on the central station because it must maintain 
a plant and equipment large enough to deliver 
the huge amounts of electricity for the dark and 
busy days of December, even though during the 
month of June when the days are long a much 
smaller plant costing very much less money 
might suffice. Similarly, plant and equipment 
must be large enough to take care of the very 
heavy demands of the late afternoons of winter 
months, whereas during the rest of the day and 
night only a small fraction of that amount of 
electricity would be demanded. These highest 
points of “demand” are called the “peak load” 
and the central station managers always have to 
figure on investing enough money to take care 
of the “peak load.” 


Governmental Regulation: 


Illinois, like nearly all of the other states of the 
union, has a State Public Utilities Commission. 
This Commssion was created by an act of the 
State legislature, approved June 30, 1913, and in 
effect Jan. 1, 1914. No monopoly should exist 
without governmental regulation, and so these 
commissions have been established with power 
to regulate the management of public service 
corporations and to control the charges for the 
use of the service which they render to the public. 
Under the laws providing for such regulation it 
is attempted to put the public and the utility 
corporations in harmonious and just relationship. 
The chief attempt of the state is to avoid unrea- 
sonable charges for the service and to assure a 
fair revenue to those supplying it. Under these 
laws the regulation of the service is made uni- 
form. Discrimination, that is, charging one cus- 
tomer less or more than another customer in 
similar circumstances, is eliminated. The purpose 
of the law creating the Public Utility Commission 
is to insure to the consumer the highest grade 
of service at prices and under conditions that are 
reasonable and just, and at the same time give 
just compensation to the utility company. 

There has been some discussion whether this 
control should be exercised by a state commis- 
sion acting under state laws, and appointed by 
the governor, or whether it should be exercised 
separately by each town or city without the con- 
trol of any state officers. The result of the dis- 
cussion has been that the state-wide regulation 
has been favored and has been kept in force 
generally throughout the country. The reasons 
why state-wide regulation has been favored, 
rather than municipal regulation, may be stated 
briefly : 

Most of the public service companies, as ex- 
plained earlier in this bulletin, serve a great 


many different towns from a central plant in 
one town. Should any single town, under such 
circumstances, be placed in a position where it 
could interfere with the service to be rendered 
in the other towns? For instance, a gas com- 
pany supplying seventy towns from its central 
plant in one town could not have the character 
of the gas, the method of its manufacture, and 
the apparatus for handling it, regulated by all 
of the towns, because each town might establish 
different standards and make the operation of 
the plant for all of the towns impossible. ' 

The state-wide regulation establishes uni- 
formity among the public utilities and provides 
the most expert service in its supervision of 
them. The small town would be unable to pro- 
vide any such facilities for regulation on account 
of the great expense involved. Officials in local 
communities have many things to do and would 
be able to give only a small part of their time 
to matters affecting public utilities. A state 
commission spends all of its time and all of the 
time of its expert employes in administering the 
affairs of public service companies. 


It is also borne in mind that contentions be- 
tween the owners and operators of public utili- 
ties and municipal officers should be settled by 
some impartial tribunal and not by officers of 
the utilities themselves nor by municipal officers 
themselves. The utilities’ interest in a dispute 
with a municipality is to ask for what they think 
is fair from their point of view. Their point of 
view will naturally sometimes be prejudiced in 
their own favor; and, on the other hand, the 
municipal authorities, being users of the service 
and representing all the other users who want the 
service at the lowest possible cost to themselves, 
will naturally have a conflicting interest and an 
interest which is also prejudiced. Under such 
conditions the State Commission supplies an 
adequate and impartial tribunal. 

The work of supplying this public service to 
the people is a very delicate and difficult business 
in all respects and must be controlled by men 
who understand it and are able to supply the 
expert service necessary. Otherwise the public 
utility companies would fall into ruin and give 
either no service at all or only inefficient and 
expensive service. 

The public service companies are owned in 
large part by the people generally, by persons 
of small means who own in small amounts bonds 
and stocks of the companies. Regulation of this 
service, therefore, must be carried on with the 
interests of these investors in view, many of 
whom are widows and orphans, and others, in- 
terested in the assets of small estates and in 
small banking and financial institutions through- 
out the country. 


The Schools Now Hold the Generation 
That Must Carry on the Utilities: 


We have reviewed a utility company “at work.” 
Let us pull back the curtain and examine more 


closely into the fundamentals that make possible 
the rendering this indispensable service and look 
ahead into the future to determine the tremend- 
ous part the students now in the public schools 
and colleges must fit themselves to play in giving 
this and future generations light, power, heat, 
transportation and means of communication. 


Service of these commodities necessary to 
modern life does not begin, nor end, with the 
mere installation of power plants, distributing 
plants, the maze of equipment, nor the buildirg 
up of great bodies of employes as the operating 
forces. 


There are three fundamental elements back of 
all this: 


1. Individual brains; this is personified in the 
man who sees the possibilities of rendering 
service to a community; who devotes his 
time, experience and brains to skillfully 
planning that service to meet needs; who 
interests people having money in his “big 
idea,” organizes a company and gives the 
public the benefits of his initiative. 

2. The investors: Those of the state and 
nation, who having saved through thrift 
from their earnings, become interested and 
purchase securities—stocks or bonds—in 

' the company in the expectation that it will 
be successful and will earn profits for them 
in return for their lending their savings to- 
wards financing this plant that is to render 
public service indiscriminately to all per- 
sons of a community. 


3. The inventors: The geniuses who made 
possible the great machines and wonderful 
apparatus that is necessary to produce ser- 
vice, and who are constantly striving for 
improvement, they too expecting financial 
reward for their labors. 


These three elements of service form an un- 
breakable chain. Were it not for the initiative, 
daring and constructive effort of the man “with 
the idea” and who carries it to success, the com- 
pany that furnishes service would not come into 
existence; were it not for the great army of in- 
vestors, made up of men and women who have 
saved, of banks, trust funds and insurance com- 
panies, the large sums of money necessary to 
build the plants planned by the promoter would 
not be possible; were it not for the ceaseless work 
of the inventor and developer, already a creator 
and striving for further improvement in machin- 
ery and methods of production, the service itself 
could not be rendered. All three are indispen- 
sable to one another. Were any one of them to 
become discouraged, development would im- 
mediately lag and the nation would be the loser. 


In the schools today are those who in the future 
must “carry on”; who must soon be in the har- 
ness working out the problems of light, heat, 
transportation and communication for the nation 
and the world; problems that will be none the 
less complex than those that the great pioneers 


have faced. The tremendous fight of the pioneers 
—those of the “first generation,” the men with 
the vision—who convinced the world that such 
“absurdities” as electric lighting, electric power, 
street cars that moved by invisible power, tele- 
phone wires that could carry a voice over un- 
limited spaces, gas that could actually be piped 
and made to cook, heat and operate great fac- 
tories, were in reality possible, and through 
overcoming incredibility and actual superstition 
made possible a revolution of home, commer- 
cial and industrial life, has not ended. Withir 
the next ten years the demands of the nation for 
service will probably be double that of now as 
a result of the more complex civilization, increase 
in population and need of more intensive and 
economical production. 


Public Utilities Built Upon 


Borrowed Money: 

In one respect the utility industry is unlike 
almost any other industry of'the nation. Polo- 
nius in Hamlet says: “Neither a borrower nor 2 
lender be.” However sage Polonius’ advice may 
have been for Shakespeare’s time, it is a fact that 
the utilities, that is, the steam railroads, the elec- 
tric railroads, the telephone companies, the gas 
companies, etc., have had to be built up on bor- 
rowed money, and the reason is very simple. In 
the case of a dry goods store, for instance, the 
merchant bills out to his customers and gets 
back from them each year several times as much 
money as he has invested in his business, whereas 
the utility bills out to its customers and gets 
back each year only a small fraction of the money 
that its stockholders have invested in it. If you 
should decide, for example, to become a mer- 
chant in your home town and you invested 
$10,000 in the business you would expect to trans- 
act a total business each year of $30,000 or $40,000 
or perhaps $50,000, but on the other hand if you 
decided to start a utility enterprise in your home 
town and you invested $10,000 in that enterprise 
you could only expect to transact a business of 
$2,000 each year, or at the best $3,000. In the case 
of your utility enterprise, even though you were 
doing a profitable business there would be so 
little money coming in to you every year that 
should a neighboring town, maybe only two or 
three miles away, invite you to supply service to 
its people you would have to say: “Thank you 
very much. I would like to serve you, but I 
must first go and see if I can find someone who 
will loan me the necessary money to pay for the 
poles and wires and transformers and turbines 
that will be required before I can give you service. 
If I can borrow this money, I will give you 
service.” 

It would not be so bad if every one was content 
just to let things stay as they are, but in this 
great country of ours the cities are growing, the 
small towns and the farming communities are 
growing, and all communities have to have utility 


service, and because these services save labor they 


are being required more and more all the time. 
Literally, every time a baby is. born some utility 
must go and borrow money to buy and install 
the equipment for the. service demand that will, 
as a matter of course, follow. As the nation 
grows this indebtedness of the utilities must 
grow. Already the securities held by the mil- 
lions of investors in these companies amount to 
twenty-one billions of dollars, and if the time 
should come when people would refuse to lend 
money to the utilities all extension of their service 
would stop and in place of progress there would 
be stagnation and demoralization in this great 
industry, which is one of the vital factors of the 
country’s prosperity. This is the reason why it 
is absolutely necessary that the credit of the 
utility companies be maintained. This is the 
reason that the utility industry is sometimes 
referred to as a “debtor industry.” 

The schools now hold the generation that must 
solve these problems. There are to be found 
those who in the future must be the planners, 
the builders and who have the visions that bring 


constructive effort; there’are the many more who. 
will work and save and furnish the money, as in- 


vestors, upon which depends future development 
of the nation and the world; there are also to be 
found the future Edisons, the Faradays, the 
Amperes, the Benjamin Franklins, whose genius 
must prove the third fountain head in this field 
of endeavor upon which the happiness and pros- 
perity of every citizen depend. 


* Kk Ox 


Definitions: 


Current is the term applied to a flow of elec- 
tricity through a conductor. The unit of current 
is an Ampere, named after Ampere, a French 
mathematician. 

A Volt represents the force required to pro- 
‘duce a current of one ampere when applied to a 
circuit of unit resistence. The name is derived 
from Volta, an Italian physicist. 

A Watt is the unit of electrical power pro- 
duced when one ampere of current flows with an 


NN 


electric pressure of one volt applied. A watt 
is equal to one seven-forty-sixth of one horse- 
power, or one horsepower is equal to 746 watts. 

A Watt Hour is the unit of electrical work. 
It represents one watt working for one hour. — 

Kilo is of Greek origin, meaning one thou- 
sand. A kilowatt is a.thousand watts. A kilowatt 
hour is a thousand watt hours. 


How to Use This Bulletin: 


NOTE—There are four ends of speech, or in 
other words, four purposes for which men speak; 
first, to make an idea clear; second, to make an 
idea impressive; third, to make men believe some- 
thing, that is, to convince; and to lead men to 
action. aye 

Rhetoric, Oral English, and Current Topics 
Classes: Suggested topics for theme writing; 
Oral English and Current Topics discussions. 
1. To Make an Idea Clear: 

Describe the Electrical Equipment of this 
Community. j 


2. To Make an Idea Impressive: ©: 


The New World Created by Electrical Inven- 
tions. 


3. To Convince: . 
Debate. Resolved: That Electricity Has 
Had a Greater Effect Upon Human Life 
Than Have the Railroads. 

4. To Secure Action: 

Make Our City the’ Best 
Equipped City in the State. 


Other Topics: 

1. An Electrically Equipped Home. 
2. Some New Uses for Electricity. 
3. A Short Story of Edison’s Life. 
Debate: 


1. Large Central Stations Systems Are Pref- 
erable to Many Smaller Plants. 


2. That Thomas A. Edison Is America’s 
Greatest Inventor. ; 


Electrically 











For Additional Bulletins Please Address: 


Illinois Committee on Public Utility Information 


203 South Dearborn Street 
CHICAGO, ILL. 








